111501-zone-count-and-story-problems
Content ---- As for this bit, i think the players need a focus point in the story for what they are doing. (since you refer to Wow let's use it. Everyone is dealing with Garrosh, not his butler or some farmer who needs help, Garrosh himself.) No one wants to get to max level and still feel like they are doing bs side quests. The Strain/Entity/Drusera are the core of this game's story, so each drop has to expand on that, otherwise it would become a story-wall. Can you imagine the uproar of the lore buffs if instead of finding out more about the Entity, we instead had 12 drops about Ickythickians and Kangaroo Captains? *edit* I would happily accept a Vapour of Lopptaria Expansion pack though :P | |} ---- Well, still, if you compare the world of Wildstar with for instance Vanilla WoW, Wildstar is still puny. I wouldn't mind more zones like Whitevale, as at least it had some diverse biomes in the zones. I'm not saying we should only have huge zones, but right now the zones aren't big (and the reason Whitevale feels big is because mounts aren't that fast, so it takes a long time to travel from one side to the other) And the reason for zone divides is to have a story and to have a theme for the zone. And about the Garrosh bit, that's MOP you're talking about. I'm talking about Vanilla WoW. Besides that, they could've just focussed more on the war part and still have a story that doesn't involve a giant threat. Heck, that's something SWTOR did great (and that game is praised for it's story) It put you in the war, but gave you a side objective that didn't make the war less important. They could've gone the same route where you are asked to explore certain aspects of Nexus without an immediate threat emerging instantly. | |} ---- ---- ---- You can compare the Exolabs as some of the caves and such in WoW, which evens it out. And Wildstar zones aren't big, they just feel big. That's again because of the mount speed. Heck, one of the zones is even cut in half (southern Grimvault) And about the Strain being an immediate threat like Ebola, they could've easily made it less of a threat by starting with something small. But the final 3 zones right now are all about the Strain, and so is the upcoming zone. And the problem isn't that the Strain is a bad idea, but that it got forced so quickly that it suddenly all became about the Strain. Again, the story itself isn't a problem, it's the way that it's brought. It's an instant "THIS IS THE BIGGEST ENEMY", even though you are not fully used to the new planet (I feel). I think the Strain would've been far more interesting if it wasn't given to you in such a big lump, 'cause right now, I feel tired of it already. I know, as I said, not all zones were good, but at least it gave the impression of a giant world. This world, not so much. Plus it gave you the actual option to just ignore a zone you didn't like and go to one you did like, or at least parts of it. Again though, this is just a thought I had and it kinda makes sense when you hear people complaining about how bad the leveling is, 'cause it's actually really liniar. | |} ---- The strain isnt an ebola outbreak tho. The strain has been active since even before the eldan were extinct. Its just only now that the Exiles and the Dominion notice their existance. I dont think the WoW world is that much larger. If you remove 1/3rd of the starting zones. If there were 3 different starting areas with 2 zones and a capital per area for exiles and dominions... the Wildstar world would probably be the same size as the vanilla wow world. This is btw something i've been missing from an MMORPG for years (since vanilla wow basicly). Why dont different races in a faction have different starting zones? About the story.. in vanilla Wow there were plenty of small stories, no major story except that its post-war and the horde and alliance are still enemies. But you know there are the Dark Iron Dwarves, the Black Dragonflight, The Defias Brotherhood, the Hakkari Troll Tribe and much much more. Some of these are later made into bigger stories with raid or patch themes. Like the Blackrock Clan in BWL, the Old Gods and Silithid in AQ (which also made the previously dead zone Silithus into one of the most populated zones in the game) and ofcourse the Naxxramas patch which brought the elemental invasion. Also there were huge areas in mid-lvl zones that were designated for lvl 60 world bosses. For example, in Duskwood there was this huge valley in the mountains where there were lvl 58-60 elite mobs and a world boss.... in the middle of a lvl 22-28 zone. Which was quite epic for newer players to find. Many games these days avoid this kind of thing because its discouraging for new players to walk into lvl 60 elites and die at lvl 20... and i understand that. But for me it was so *cupcake*ing cool seeing the lvl ?? elite mobs walking around. It made me excited to hit the max level and get to know what was in that place. Vanilla wow was and still is an amazing game (i've played for 2 years on an instant 60 server and 2 years on a blizzlike 1x rates server... and before that i played vanilla from release to finish). Something else that developers these days think is tedious is something that made the vanilla WoW world feel huge. You didnt grind lvl 1-10 in one zone, lvl 11-15 in the next zone etc. For lvl 1-10 you could chose between different zones, lvl 11-20 you had to go to multiple zones over the world because just one of those zones wasnt enough to gain all those levels etc. Sure sometimes it sucked, for example when you rolled Night Elf and had to leave Ashenvale at around lvl 19 and take the boat to Menethil Harbour in Wetlands and then run to Loch Modan to get to your next quest hub. But this is also one of those things that made the world *cupcake*ing epic. A guy at a dock halfacross the worlds gave you a quest to go to the other half of the world and deliver something and there you found new quests and later on you notice "yay i've gained enough lvls to go back to that zone i was in before and continue the other half of the quests". You even picked up a few quests on the road, maybe met a few players to group with or saw some awesome high level player ride past you. This also included lots of travel through contested zones (neither horde nor alliance zone, aka pvp zone) so you might run into someone of the opposite faction and fight them. I dont know why i started writing all that, i had something wise and constructive to say but i totally forgot it when i got my vanilla *cupcake* going... sorry. Oh well, sadly gone are the days of low-mid level raids to enemy questhubs. Gone are the days exploring the world to get to a questhub rather than exploring the world to get free items or titles. Gone are the days where you actually had stuff to look forward to while leveling other than hitting 50. Example: Oh i cant wait untill i get 40 so i can buy myself a mount. These days its all about making the game linear so any dumbass with the attentionspan like a goldfish on a shugar rush can follow the storyline and where to go next. And everything you do need to give you rewards that are upgrades. Every class has one type of weapon. Completing a quest gives you a choice between 4 different pieces of gear per class so no matter what spec or class you are you can get something that is an item upgrade for your class. Oh yeah thats what i was going to write. So, i've played around 7+ years of vanilla wow over retail + private servers and i can still find quests that i had no idea existed. And still i've leveled 20+ characters to max levels over all races and classes. --- Tl;dr - Vanilla wow was awesome from 1-60 eventho you had to do lots of running, had no mounts and the questpath was split into 40 branches. Not just one huge line of quests. You completed a long quest... got some XP and god and a caster staff eventho you played warrior, but didnt care because each quest didnt have to be an upgrade to your gear. Shit wasnt designed to reward everyone equally for everything.... but that was part of the charm. Instead of having 1 quest where the reward is 12 different kinds of boots. You had 7 different quests with different rewards (perhaps not all boots, perhaps not all at the same levels... perhaps not even in the same zone). Damn even my tl;dr is getting long... i hate you vanilla wow. I hate you because of how *cupcake*ing brilliant you were. | |} ---- Sorry, but no. There is no comparison between WoW's caves and the Exolabs. Granted some of the early ones are small; each portion of the Phage labs could reasonably be considered a full zone in and of itself; and many of the other exolabs are quite robust. The zones in W* don't just feel big because of mount speed; they are quite large. And W* also builds vertically, with some zones seeing several vertical levels of explorable area (e.g. Wilderrun with the forest floor and the Hunters / Lopp tree area's). Sorry you are tired of the strain; but why would that also not hold in any other MMO. Vanilla WoW is a bad comparison, since frankly, It didn't actually have a real central story. It was a Narrative hodge podge until later additions. That isn't entirely true. Yes the strain has been around since the Eldan fell on Nexus but..... Seriously, major spoilers here... It has taken time to become as widespread as it is now; because Drusera has been trying to stop herself from spreading it. Drusera is the Entity (split personality) and only recently has her Entity self begun winning control of their body / powers. | |} ---- ---- Already saved Nexus from the Ikthians on Farside; There already is an evil corporation between the Exiles and Dom (protostar), Osun could be a cool ex-pac, freebots aren't really evil.... dreg are over used in dailies, but could be cool with a good story. I'm sure we will get more protostar stories; and more ikthians eventually. Probably some with the Lopp and the Ekos as well. | |} ---- Yes i'm also sure we will see them sooner or later. Because frankly there isnt much more to be milked out of the Strain story imo. I just hope that we dont need to wait for an expansion for those other stories. And perhaps there could be multiple going on at the same time? | |} ---- I'm going to throw EQ2 into that because I feel the same way. I'm still trying to figure out why I'm not hooked on Wildstar.. is it too distilled? Too straight path? Not enough incentive to explore content? I seriously don't know, but what I do know is you were spot on with your post. +1. The worst part is.. Wildstar (despite the bugs) is a good game.. just.. not addictive for some unknown reason. I mean.. just look at reddit. Dozens like my post. "It's good.. just....." and then the 100 yard stare. | |} ---- ---- ---- I would like to marry this post and have its babies! But it`s not just Wildstar that`s a little too linear with the leveling process. Just look at the difference in freedom of exploration between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 3. It`s like they`re not even the same genre anymore at all. Maybe it`s just easier to design linear games or something. Anyway, I think you actually agree a bit with the OP. Whether it was bigger or not isn`t so important. What is important is that after finishing noob central in WoW Classic you had like three to five different zones at any point from which to choose. Sick and tired of Redridge/Duskwood? Go to Ashenvale for a bit. Can`t stand one more second of Barrens chat? Take the zep and quest in Silverpine instead. And WoW actually managed to be more or less like that all the way to cap, with a few slow points along the way. But yeah, I miss quest givers sending you to the ass end of space with a map that`s entirely grey. Some of it was a bit...esoteric, like the Gnomeregan quest you get in the middle of Stonetalon. But great fun anyway. I am starting to think that MMORPGs actually need this sort of thing to integrate the game world and make it feel real. Racing from quest hub to quest hub gets a bit stale sometimes, although that`s all you get in WoW too these days. And the story was there in WoW, but it was hidden away in dialogues a little, but mainly in endless books only the biggest nerds every found and read. So the WoW story was entirely optional, and also hard to find, and spread out in the weirdest places. WS on the other hand tells you the story, whether you want to hear it or not. | |} ---- This, so much this. I remember when I was 60, I still had tons of quests to do that I never found out about it. And I also remember running around constantly discovering things in that world, unlike this world (where I almost got 100% of the maps discovered. Only maps I haven't fully explored are the strain maps, 'cause I couldn't care anymore) I give Vanilla WoW as a comparison as I feel that game did it right by not giving you a central story. I don't play MMO's to have a single player experience. The only MMO that succeeded into making me enthralled into the story was SWTOR, and the class stories weren't even main stories, but more side stuff you happen to do in the world (plus the main complaint of that game was that it was a very good single player game, rather than a MMO). Wildstar forced the strain upon us. Yes, you can say 'the strain is like Ebola, so it needs to be dealt with immediatly', but Carbine made up the Strain, they could've not make it as immediate as it now is. A MMO doesn't need a central story, or at least not at the start. It needs you to show the world, let you explore it. And I feel that's one of the things WoW did right. Yes :P (even to this day, Silithus is an uncomplete zone :P) | |} ---- Uhh, as a Jedi Knight you end up killing the Emperor at the end... as a Sith you become a Council member from what i recall. That sounds pretty main story to me (and the big boss was your commander who goes rogue once the Emperor gets knocked out) :P | |} ---- But that didn't make it more important than the War effort. So yes, while it might sound big for you,, it really isn't for the world. It's your personal story. The story in Wildstar however is one where it's still an immediate threat that the whole world has to face. Plus the way it brought it was just better. But again, SWTOR was praised for having great single player experience, but not a MMO experience ;) | |} ---- Well vanilla WoW didnt have a central story other than "the war between the alliance and the horde is over and the world is rebuilding itself, but they still hate eachother". But almost every *cupcake*ing character you met in vanilla wow had their own story. Like the rivalry between the farms in Elwynn Forest or Mankirk and his dead wife. Where is the "Mankirk's Wife" quest of Wildstar? :P --- But yea i still love Wildstar, there are few things about this game i dislike... but i see so many things that could have made this game even better. I still play this game, mostly because i can play it by using credd rather than have a subscription. I just hope some of the future drops will bring something that i've felt the game is missing :P And about the Strain, in itself the Strain isnt a bad enemy or a bad story. I just think that they should've let us level to 50 without knowing about it. Have all the first dungeons and raids be Strain-free. Then drop a Strain patch and have it be kinda like the AQ opening event: Blighthaven is released as the new zone with new quests and rep grinds. The combined forces of both factions on each server need to gather stuff to prepare for the war against the Strain. Players at 50 can take a quest that starts a huge questline where we are introduces to the background of the strain and everything (pretty much the Drusera world story). The questline would also include the GA attunement thingy. When all resources are gathered on a server (or when a certain timelimit runs out) players who have completed the questchain will be able to turn it in for a reward. When the first person turns it in Blighthaven is flooded with Strain monsters, when all those monsters are killed GA is made available for attuned players (perhaps the monsters even give some kind of rep reward to encourage non-raiding players to help kill them). The first player and every other player who turns in the quest within 8 hours gain a title + some item reward. Players who turn it in after 8+ hours only get the item reward. BAM mega uber awesome stuff that involves the Strain and makes it feel like an actual "ebola outbreak thingy" and the biggest "Mystery" of Nexus is kept a mystery untill later on in the games life and is not explored at lvl 40. | |} ---- I totally agree, except for the AQ event part, as that event was just horrible :P (it made the whole zone lag to where you couldn't do anything and some servers only finally got the event done after months while other servers had done it in a week) But some other kind of event would've been neat ;) | |} ---- Technically it was only one of the mouth pieces of the emperor that was killed by the Jedi knight. The emperor is still alive but in a weakened state. The Jedi consular has a pathetic ending; he exorcises one of the emperors mind controlled pawns who happens to be a high ranking jedi council member, and takes their place . The Sith Warrior doesn't become a council member, but gets essentially free reign from them. The Sith Inquisitor kills his predecessor on the council and actually becomes a member of the Sith Council. Decent stories, and some fun stuff in-between. But not a great MMO narrative. | |} ---- The first server to open the gates were Medivh (US) and they opened it after 18 days. My server in retail took around 2 months to open it. But it was still super awesome. In my opinion one of the most awesome events in mmorpg history :p | |} ---- It's not just numbers - don't be silly. You can't deny that WS is short on zones and extremely short on leveling variety - in fact, it's practically nonexistent. Leveling paths really should not merge so quickly, if they even merge at all (would be nice if they didn't), and this goes both for between faction leveling paths and within. It is a huge pain for us altaholics. As for your last question - by all means, yes! Whitevale is quite varied aesthetically, which kept me from tiring of it the first time through, even though I was in the same zone for forever. Doesn't change the extreme linearity of leveling paths, though. | |} ---- But once the gong was hit it was on! | |} ---- ---- See... I'm not sure Wildstar is "Short on zones" as it is LASER FOCUSED on efficiency. There is very little back tracking or wasted space. If you're not in a space with quest givers, you're in a space that's supposed to be overflowing with the corpses of NPCs. You blow through zones with amazing, and somewhat alarming, speed. | |} ---- It's short on zones in the sense that we have no real alternative leveling paths. Once you hit Algoroc and Celestion (or Ellevar/Deradune), that's pretty much all the variety you're going to get. For some reason it's even more painful to me than leveling in TERA - a game in which I had 2 1/2 full accounts worth of characters... despite the largely linear leveling path (though there were some options). Maybe because the combat system just made it more fun, I dunno. But this game... leveling multiple alts hurts. @.@ I want more options. | |} ---- ---- Thats the problem tho. Having these kinds of problems AND lots of other problems will most likely result in the game not lasting a full year. Sadly this game has a few existing things that needs to be fixed, after that they need to add more content (and not just The bloody cupcakeing Defile, they need more low level zones, more dungeons perhaps a few more adventures). And some kind of population fix, either server mergers or Mega-servers. After this is resolved, the population will grow to a stable enough size and perhaps even be healthy enough to grow slowly over time. Thats when plans like "adding more stuff in future expansions" will sound like a good plan. | |} ----